Give it some time. FF7 also started out slow and linear before turning into the best game ever.
It was also WAY to modernized for me, the enemies were just robots, treasure chests were replaced by weird floating orbs, the save spots are ugly computers, and shiva turns into a motercycle...UGH!!! The worst part for me was the hp guage which is so hard to see and then it turns into the same colour as some other gauge and before you know it....you're dead. Oh..and why did FF do away with armor? I was really dissapointed for the first few hours, but because its FF, i kept on playing..then something happenned.
Things started coming together. The story was awesome, the characters were great. The battles started getting more involved and enjoyable once I finally figured out what was going on. I began to notice a lot of similarities between the great FF games from before. It takes awhile, and it IS different, but this game still has the potential to be awesome...it gets better and better each time I play it.